An Approach to Advertising on the Internet
January 31, 2010
Budweiser has the frogs. McDonalds has Ronald. Goodyear has the baby. Each of these companies has used different images as a means of advertising with traditional media. Television, radio, and print ads have been extremely successful in helping companies develop a successful brand image. With the World Wide Web, however, marketing departments struggle to incorporate traditional advertising into a high-tech medium like the Internet.
The Internet continues to grow at a rapid pace. Billions of dollars have already been transacted this year and with the holiday season approaching those numbers will only increase. The traditional forms of marketing and advertising still have their place; however, in a world where one out of every eight dollars is spent online, the traditional 4P’s of business might not fully apply.
In the past, the business mantra was "location, location, location." More businesses have realized that, with the Internet boom, the new mantra is more like "logistics, logistics, logistics." Marketing is not an issue of where you are anymore. Instead, companies need to properly place themselves in the vast World Wide Web so that customers can easily search for the products and services they are looking to buy. This becomes difficult because consumers do their shopping from their computer at home.
7 Reasons Why Your Small Business Needs A Web Site
January 30, 2010
Many small businesses have the misconception that their business can not benefit from a website; that websites are too expensive or that because they don’t use a computer neither do their potential clients. Here are 7 reasons why your small business NEEDS a website:
1. A web site lends credibility to your small business. Consumers expect businesses to have a web site and more and more consumers are turning to the internet to research a business service or product before purchasing. If you don’t have a web site you could be losing out to the competition. Even if you operate your business out of your home, a web site can help give your business a professional image.
2. Web sites are a cost effective venue for promoting your business. Many small business owners are afraid that web sites cost too much money. This is just not true ? a professionally designed web site can cost less than $100/ month. Considering you have the opportunity to reach millions of potential customers this is a cost effective method to reach your target market.
Dynamic Pages
January 29, 2010
Dynamic pages and the Search Engines By Clare Lawrence 10th March 2003 Clare is the CEO of Discount Domains Ltd a leading UK Domain name registration service.
Do search engines such as google penalise dynamic pages?
Dynamic pages are used to deliver content from a database to websites ? the advantage being that data can be updated and the contents of pages changed without the need to reload pages etc.
Google publishes guidance notes on its site at http://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html and at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html
These say that dynamic pages are indexed but that the Googlebot ( Google’s spider ) can overwhelm dynamic sites and therefore the amount of pages indexed are limited
Google recommends:- "If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e. the URL contains a ‘?’ character) be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them small.
How to get dynamic pages indexed
There are ways to get dynamic pages indexed, if the site is relatively small, then create a site map, which has static links to each of the dynamic pages. This gives the search engines a "doorway" to the dynamic pages.
Quality of Your Text Layout and Design
January 29, 2010
Why is the quality of your text layout and design important on your web site? For the simple reason that people tends to stay longer on a web site that radiates quality and simplicity.
Why?
Because it gives you a more professional impression and the text is easy to read.
On the web today there are many web sites with a cluttered design. The amount of text that is gathered in one place is too big, therefore it’s more difficult to read and focus on text phrases.
If you separate coherent text in boxes, then you hekp the reader to read more easily. Make space between text boxes. Always use a text font size that is not smaller than 10. Organize the text with headings. Make headings with a bigger font size than the body text and you may use a different font.
It’s recommended that you use borders in black around the text.
It should be easy for the eye to focus from one group of text to another.
If you follow these guidelines, then you will be able to read faster and the eye will be less strained. You will be rewarded by spending more time on the text design and layout of your site.
Five Reasons To Use MICR Check Printing Software
January 28, 2010
Five Reasons To Use MICR Check Printing Software
by: Larry Andrew
Did you know you could print your own checks for as little as 4 cents per check?
If you write a lot of checks, have multiple bank accounts, multiple businesses or use pre-numbered checks, I have good news for your. MICR printing software is very affordable and will save you both time and money.
Here are five reasons to seriously consider using MICR check printing software:
1. Pre-numbered checks are not cheap. You can save as much as 10 cents per check by printing your own checks.
2. If you use pre-numbered checks and make a mistake, you have to void the check number and print another check. It takes you more time and will cost you even more money… even if the printer goofed and you didn’t!
3. The MICR check printing software can be used with your current accounting program. You’ll recover your MICR software investment quickly.
4. Good MICR check printing software will print all required check information plus your signature in one-pass. No need to waste your time re-running or signing checks.
Improve Your Website In 3 Simple Ways
January 27, 2010
You may already have thought about the following 3 ways and some of you may already have them in place on your website. If so - congratulations - you’re well on the way to having a website that will bring you more business. So here they are then - the 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website..
1. You’re Fishing For Visitors - You’ll Need This To Hook Them.
Ever been surfing on a website that held your attention and then the phone rings? You take the call, take some notes, get distracted, visit another website and before you know it you’ve forgotten all about the website you were viewing. It happens all the time and if you don’t have a Bookmarking tool on your website it will be happening with the people that come to your website. A Bookmarking tool is just a simple link or logo that your visitors can click on in order to bookmark your website or add it to their favourites.
The Yin & Yang of Internet Marketing
January 26, 2010
Westerners believe opposites flow in a natural cycle always replacing the other. They tend to look at things as black or white, right or wrong, up or down, giving a separation and unrelated-ness in their perspective.
Chinese view opposites as evolving and cycling. There is neither right nor wrong, but rather there is balance, transformation, interaction and a dependent opposition. Think of it as a duality that cannot exist without both parts.
Now let’s apply this theory to Internet Marketing. When I first came online I subscribed to many Ezines and Newsletters and didn’t always pay attention to the ads, but I did read the articles and editorials. They were my "information hotlines" and why I subscribed in the first place.
It wasn’t long before I discovered ezine article submissions. Here then is the Yin & Yang of Internet Marketing: all publications need content — all content (articles) need publishers. Now I could put the two together in a duality that could not exist without both parts.
Get Off To A Running Start With Microsoft Word XP
January 25, 2010
Get Off To A Running Start With Microsoft Word XP
by: Peter Kitson
Just as we were getting comfortable with our cozy, fuzzy version of MS Word, along comes Word XP. This article explains some of it’s important new features and how to make the most of them. Time to get your sneakers on and let’s get off to a running start with Word XP.
Multiple Documents
In older versions of Word, new documents took over the entire Word window. With Word XP, each new document opens in a separate window. It’s easy to switch between documents by simply choosing a document from the list on the ‘Window’ menu. The ‘Arrange All’ command from the ‘Window’ menu conveniently lets you view all open Word documents at the same time. You can also switch which document is currently active by pressing [Alt]+[Tab].
The Word XP Task Pane
With the XP version, Microsoft decided to change some of the screen layout. For example, the Word XP task panes display on the right hand side of the document you’re working on. The options that display in these panes vary depending on your most recent commands. In earlier versions of Word, a lot of these commands would have been displayed in dialog boxes.
Guide to Internet Business - Website Setup
January 24, 2010
After planning the design and content of your website, it’s time to actually physically set up your website. This is the step where you put all your designs and plans into action, creating a website that will attract visitors and earn income.
a) WEBHOSTING
A webhost is a company that stores the pages and pictures and other files of your website. When a person visits your website, they will request these files from your webhost’s server so they can view the website. When choosing a webhost, be careful to choose one that is reliable. After all, if your webhost has problems for any reason, people won’t be able to visit your website, and you won’t be earning any money.
In addition, different webhosts have varying services and tools that they offer. Some of the more important points to consider when choosing a webhost are as follows:
* SPACE AND BANDWIDTH - Space refers to how much file storage space is available for your website. For a standard website with about 20 pages with graphics, 30MB is plenty. Online stores might require more space depending on how many products and pictures you have. Bandwidth refers to how many files can be downloaded and viewed by visitors per month. A normal website with reasonable traffic (200 visitors a day) will need about 2GB bandwidth. Again, if you own a business with lots of products and webpages, you might need more bandwidth.
Searching The Internet Without Search Engines
January 24, 2010
The World Wide Web contains more than ten million websites with thousands more being added daily from all over the world, and search engines are tasked with presenting the most relevant pages based on the search criteria entered. Finding a large and popular site like www.irs.gov is easy because it is related to a large agency, but a small site like mine www.consumermortgagereduction.com would be impossible without the use of search engines. The task of finding a website that relates to a specific subject would be almost without the use of the search engine, yet they perform this task with relative ease using tools that may be unknown to most users of search engines.
The first of these tools utilize by search engines are web-crawlers; they search sites based on meta-tags, or the hidden descriptions of the site encoded in the head of the web page. By using web-crawlers to spider websites, the search engine does not have to search the entire webpage to return results, just the first few lines of code. The majority of the code web-crawlers spider is contained in the head section or top of the web page, and search engines use this information to list relevant search terms results.
